Spears of destiny

by Arthur D. Howden Smith

"Ralph," he said, "'tis a matter I like not to think over any more. I would be alone for a space. Do you drop back and follow at a distance."

"Ay, Messer Hugh."

Ralph touched his cap and reined in his mount, an ache in his honest heart at the thought that his idol did not want him.

Hugh rode on slowly, the reins loose on the stallion's neck, his head drooped in meditation. He tried not to think of the events of the afternoon. He tried to fasten his mind upon the accounts he must go over that evening with old Robin Fletcher, Ralph's father and the bailiff of the Chesby lands. He tried, when he was convinced that accounts held no interest for him, to recall the verses of some brave chanson and hum them to himself. He tried to think of the new harness he meant to order in London town against his own journey over-seas. He tried a dozen ways of diverting his mind, all equally without success.

The sky darkened in the west and the shadows lengthened. The trees that lined the narrow track cast a weaving shuttle of shade, as the wind brushed their tops. But Hugh was heedless of all about him. The stallion knew the homeward path and was safe to follow it. Hugh was enwrapped in gloomy consideration of his own affairs. He never saw the slinking figure that crept among the trees, gained the roadside copse and stole slowly nearer as the light waned.

Hugh's first warning was the sudden swerving of the stallion. Out of the tail of his eye he had a momentary vision of a compact object that hurled itself across the road at him, of a knife that flashed in air. Then came the impact. Hugh half-turned in his saddle, and struck out with the hunting-spear he held in his right hand. The blow served to deflect the knife, but his assailant caught him about the waist with one arm and dragged him, tussling, to the dust of the path. The spear flew from Hugh's hand. The stallion snorted and reared, hesitated and galloped back along the way they had come.

Hugh found strength for one despairing cry.

"Ralph!" he shouted. "Ralph! To——"

The threatening knife cut short his words. The man he had to contend with was squat and immensely agile, and very slippery to hold. Time and again in that brief struggle in the dust Hugh thought he had pinned him down, only to find the dark, villainous face, with deep-set, wicked eyes, leering at him from above, the knife barely held off by such a grip as Hugh had secured on the assassin's wrist. It was a battle fought in silence. Hugh was too busy to speak after his first frantic cry. The assailant grunted a few exclamations in some language Hugh did not understand, but he, too, had no wind to spare.

Over and over they rolled, the knife circling and stabbing, slicing and cutting. Hugh's doublet was cut to ribbons, a long scratch on his shoulder bled freely. But always he managed to ward off the point in time to avert a deadly blow. He was tiring fast, however, and a look of ferocious satisfaction was dawning in the squat man's eyes, when the thunder of hoofs resounded in the narrow way.